Since our 2016 Demo Day last October, we’ve been busy supporting our 2016 grads and planting the seeds for our 2017 accelerator program. Today, we’re happy to announce applications to Brandery 2017 will be opening on MONDAY, MARCH 6th. This year we have a much clearer focus on the type of companies we are looking for.

Over the past seven years, we’ve had 66 companies graduate The Brandery program. More importantly, we’ve learned a lot from our founders – and learned even more about how we’re able to help them. For us, it means going to back to basics. Cincinnati is referred to as the Branding & Marketing Capital of the World, thanks to the presence of storied consumer companies like Procter & Gamble, Macy’s, Kroger, and many others. If we’re going to continue our goal of bringing top-notch startups to Cincinnati and improving their odds of succeeding, we need to ensure they find customers early – and often.

To that end, we’re going to be placing a significant emphasis on recruiting, interviewing, and accepting startups that operate in the world of Digitally-Native Full Stack Products (CPG are part of that) & startups that support these kind of companies (both large and small). In essence, we’re looking for companies in the following areas:

Digitally-Native Products – Companies that have built a physical product and sell primarily online, but would also potentially value retail connections.

We know that we’ll be able to better support startups in these areas. An added benefit will be the greater potential for internal collaboration. There is no reason our startups couldn’t work with one another over the course of the program, and we’ll do everything we can to encourage this.

We’re very excited to continue our mission of helping great startups become even greater by building their brand. If you’re interested in applying (or know anyone else who might be) check out the links below: